The journey to Leticia took us through some very wide stretches of the Amazon proper - up until then I had only been on the Huallage and Marañon Rivers. We passed many deforested and eroding islands on the way - I saw at least three large portions of the earth fall into the river as we passed. During the trip I commented to Petra that on that boat she was in the company of one of the ugliest men on the planet - so she took a photo of him (see photo). I don`t know who the other guy is.
We arrived in Santa Rosa, checked out of Peru and water-taxied over past Brazil to Colombia. There after discovering the one and only backpackers in Leticia was closed down, we checked into an expensive hotel. The next day we promptly checked out and found one with dorms for half the price. Then we walked a few kilometres out of town to the airport to find the immigration office closed for lunch. So we returned by taxi and I left my backpack in the back - after discovering this I jumped into a mototaxi to hunt down Taxi No. 295. Luckily enough he had returned directly to the airport without realising my bag (with my camera) was still there. The driver was socialising with the other cab drivers away from his car so I just walked over, casually retrieved my bag through the open window and walked off. Heh heh, the perfect crime. I was uselessly sick that day but managed to get some decent vege food in the evening which made me feel better.
The following morning we left early for Puerto Nariño by speedboat, touted as `a world-class model for sustainable development` by Lonely Planet (or `The Book of Lies` as one fellow traveller calls it). Well, yeah, it certainly is a pretty town; definitely the nicest town I`d seen in the Amazon so far with relatively garbage-free tree-lined streets, happy(er) folk and... no automated vehicles permitted. Mind you being set on a steep hill with a population of only 2000 would make that decision a lot easier I`d reckon. It and surrounding towns live on electricity generated by a large generator that operates only 12hrs a day. We stayed in a lovely hostel with big shade trees, comfortable lodgings and a cute garden.
However the heat was oppressive - it topped 34 and 90% humidity the day we arrived, and despite cooling off over the next few days it made for us doing a whole lot of not much for our three day stay. That was fine by me - I enjoyed the sleeping, reading and eating more than forcing myself to do stuff. We did visit an aquatic museum called Naütatama, which displayed life-sized wooden carvings of river life from under and around the water like manatees, pink dolphins, river otters and massive black caimans. On the last evening after some heavy rain we took a tour with Ismael the indigenous hostel gardener to his small village nearby, 20 de Julio. The walked passed through primary, secondary and tercery rainforests - just fancy terms for how trashed the jungle is really. Even the primary forest was not really that exciting due to the proximity of human disturbance and habitacion. But it`s always great to walk through the rainforest for me and we saw some cool insects and plants. At 20 de Julio we watched one of the daily `mini-soccer on concrete` games between the residents while the rain continued.
We returned to Leticia early the next day to catch our flight to Bogota and ended up waiting quite a while at the airport. The flight went smoothly on a Boeing 737 (I wasn`t expecting that¡ - we paid AU$43 each for our 1500km flights). Bogota revealed itself when I saw the layer of thick smog between the ground and our plane.
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